Reciprocal Teaching - a Research-based Approach

"The original reciprocal teaching model was developed by Palincsar and Brown (1984) *. They found that when reciprocal teaching was used with a group of students for just fifteen to twenty days, the students' reading on a comprehension assessment increased from 30 percent to 80 percent. The students were also able to function more independently in the classroom, were able to summarise verbally, write contextually accurate summaries, predict questions and detect incongruities in texts. Not only did the students show these improvements in English and literature, they also improved their test scores in science and social studies on an average from 20 percent to 50 to 60 percent."

A review of studies of reciprocal teaching in 1994 concluded that it is a technique that improves reading comprehension. B. Rosenshine and C. Meister. (1994) 'Reciprocal Teaching: A Review of Nineteen Experimental Studies.' Review of Educational Research 64, 479-530.